4

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Wanted Sherlock Holmes To Die

Sidney Paget

Sherlock Holmes' brilliant and often bewildering exploits have inspired a still-flowing torrent of television shows, movies, comics, books, and stage plays, not to mention an amount of Benedict Cumberbatch-Martin Freeman erotic fan art best left to the private mode of your web browser. Hell, he's one of the few fictional creations to overstep the bounds of imagination and assert his influence onto the real world, as some have credited the (again, fictional) detective with fathering modern forensics.

Sony Pictures Television
And, sadly, modern forensics TV shows.

All of which means that, somewhere in England, Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is harrumphing in his grave.

That's because Doyle fucking hated Holmes. Or, more accurately, he resented him. See, much like many of us who spent our younger years dreaming of being famous doctors or presidents or Evel Knievel, Doyle had big dreams of his own -- and they didn't involve inventing the preeminent detective story. Instead, he fancied himself more of a historical novelist and viewed his Holmes stories as "hack work" written for the sole purpose of making extra scratch to pay off his college loans.

M. Menpes
"The quicker I can write this crap, the quicker I can write checks."

3

Emily Dickinson Wanted Her Life's Work Put To The Torch

Discha-AS/iStock

Emily Dickinson, the superhero of introverts everywhere, penned more than 1,800 poems, but only a handful of highly edited ones were published prior to her death in 1886. And if it had been up to her, that's all the world would ever have read, because she left her younger sister, Lavinia, strict instructions to go into her bedroom after her death and torch every last scrap of paper she could find.

Yale University
Spinsterhood and pyromania frequently go hand-in-hand.

2

Woody Allen Hated Manhattan So Much He Offered To Replace It For Free

United Artists

Woody Allen is famous for having married his own step-daughter and also for making some movies, we guess. One of the most well known is 1979's Manhattan. The film was Allen's second-biggest box office hit (right behind Annie Hall), garnered two Academy Award nominations, and -- in an achievement that actually means something to our readers -- holds a whopping 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It's landed on pretty much every "Top 100 Movies" list ever compiled, and it even inspired a song by '80s pop sensation and sentient hairstyle Richard Marx.

1

Harper Lee Tossed To Kill A Mockingbird Out A Window

Universal Pictures

The 1960 novel To Kill A Mockingbird won a Pulitzer Prize, beat out the Bible as the one book every person should read before they die, and, much to the relief of every single high school student since 1962, inspired a truly great film of the same name. The novel's author, Harper Lee, loved the book so goddamned much that she never, ever wrote another one.

Grand Central Publishing
End of discussion, or else your doctor will have to Go Set A Broken Jaw.

That's probably because the process of writing the novel was like trying to sculpt Michelangelo's David using only the teeth of a live tiger. To Kill A Mockingbird began life as a manuscript entitled Go Set A Watchman, which is now better known as the ill-advised "sequel." The editor assigned to the book informed her that, talented writer though she may be, her book was a stinky, pilotless turd. Over the next three years the aforementioned editor, Tay Hohoff, served as Lee's taskmaster, relentlessly leading her through draft after draft of the book, sometimes having hours-long arguments over the most piddling of changes. The process took its toll on Lee, until one day she finally snapped and tossed the whole thing out the window. Literally. Just tossed what is universally regarded as one of history's greatest books into a snow bank, probably to be peed on by a wandering dog or something. She then collapsed into tears and called Hohoff, who was having precisely none of this bullshit.

Universal Pictures
"It's a sin to kill To Kill A Mockingbird."

She ordered Lee to march straight out into the snow and gather up the pages that would go on to sell more than 30 million copies worldwide. And, rumor has it, to this day you can hold your copy of the book up to your nose and still smell that dog urine -- the dog urine of literary genius.

Janel Comeau doesn't hate her blog or her Twitter feed, and she's pretty sure you won't hate them either.

Which Sci-Fi Trope Would You Bring To The Real World, And Why? Every summer we're treated to the same buffet of three or four science fiction movies with the same basic conceits. There's man vs. aliens, man vs. robots, man vs. army of clones and man vs. complicated time travel rules. With virtual reality and self-driving cars fast approaching, it's time to consider what type of sci-fi movie we want to be living in for the rest of our lives. Co-hosts Jack O'Brien and Adam Tod Brown are joined by Cracked's Tom Reimann and Josh Sargent along with comedians David Huntsberger, Caitlin Gill, and Lizzy Cooperman to figure out which sci-fi trope would be the best to make a reality. Get your tickets to this live podcast here!

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